


Hope

by ms_nawilla



Series: The Wheat and the Chaff [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Battle Scars (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Battle Scars References, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Gen, Not Battle Scars Compliant, Post-Episode: s01e17 Turn Turn Turn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1722842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_nawilla/pseuds/ms_nawilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Hill cleans her guns and ponders that last phone call from Melinda May and Phil Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> For my longtime cheerleader and beta ceria (remaining mistakes can be blamed on my error/stubbornness). Also thanks to weepingnaiad who asked for more after _Trust_. (This follows _Trust_ directly).

_He really doesn’t know, does he?_

_He can never know._

Maria sighed as she dismantled her gun, cleaning the surfaces to a polished gleam, carefully oiling the mechanisms.  She had been trained to do this quickly, efficiently.  From dirty to dismantled to clean and ready again in minutes.  She had done it under fire, in driving rain, in bitter cold, with blood on her hands and with broken fingers.

But sometimes, when she was alone, it was almost a meditation.  Or a prayer.

_Now he never would._

With a surprisingly gentle hand, she loaded the clip, put the gun down and picked up the next one.  She had gone through a lot of guns in the past few days.

She remembered the first time she had met Agent Phil Coulson.  She had been a young junior agent, embarrassingly green, and still trying to find her feet.  Fresh out of the military boy’s club, she had been trying hard to prove herself, they all were, and she had taken Phil for just another bureaucrat in a suit, getting fat off the sweat and blood and brains of the grunts.  Someone who didn’t get his hands dirty.

Seventy-two hours later, she was made aware that she didn’t know half of what she thought she did and that for all his polite exterior, Phil Coulson could be one badass son of a bitch who would be damned before he would leave his agents behind, no matter what parts they had between their legs.  She learned he would indeed get his hands dirty (and his suit ruined) without hesitation, that he had built his career on his own sweat and blood, and that one underestimated him at their peril.

And that while he really had a thing for nifty spy gadgets, he was also pretty good in a fight. 

He could sass Director Fury like no one she had ever met before or since, and the director actually seemed to think he was funny.  She was still learning all the reasons why, hearing all the old stories of when Coulson and Fury were Phil and Nick, the BadAss Boy’s Club, but the price of admission was loyalty, not gender.  After New York, Nick had let her climb the ladder up to the treehouse and taught her the secret handshake. 

But Phil was gone, and she knew that was a hole she couldn’t fill.

 A _gent Coulson is down_. _. . They called it_.

She picked up the next gun, not even grimacing at the dark wash of red over the barrel, just starting over, taking it apart and scrubbing away the grim traces of death. 

When Phil first came back, everything was different but they were all trying so hard to pretend it was still the same.  They didn’t know if they were supposed to be afraid of him dropping dead without warning or if he would just have a psychotic episode in the middle of the workday and kill them all before anyone noticed.  Nick started downing a shot every time Phil seemed normal after a meeting, then later, every time he noticed another discrepancy or lie.  Maria briefly considered mainlining TUMS.  She was still surprised her face hadn’t cracked during all those meetings where she held herself still, while every instinct urged her to smile stupidly in agreement or run away screaming.

Or blurt out the truth and beg for forgiveness.

_Please let me die.  Please let me die._

It wasn’t just the pain in his voice that haunted her.  It was the fear.  The terror of knowing what they were trying to do, knowing what the consequences had been for the others, worrying about what he would become and not being able to stop it.  Fearing life more than death, perhaps unaware he had died already.  Or worse, remembering and still preferring it to life.

She hadn’t been there.  She had only seen the tapes.  It hadn’t been her call.  But that was the secret handshake.  The price of being at the top was betraying the people you loved for the greater good, and convincing yourself it was for their own good too.

She had thought she wasn’t there yet, but then she had just helped take down all of SHIELD and God only knew how many good loyal agents had died in the crossfire.  Sometimes they could cut out the cancer, but sometimes the body just died.

She wondered who Phil had to hurt, to betray, for the greater good.  Was it May?  What did he do that made her tell him about the satellite phone?  What would he have done to her if he had survived?  Coulson had always valued loyalty and a betrayal of his trust could rarely be forgiven and never forgotten.

“Don’t spend all night listening to that.  It will only give you nightmares.” 

Maria looked up, but Nick was already gone, faintly shuffling down the hall to his own bunk.  She reached for the tablet to lower the volume, not wanting to disturb Nick’s sleep with the audio file she had been playing on repeat.

_This is a direct line to Director Fury._

_Gunshots_. 

Maria stilled, willing the tears away as the shots rang out again.  _Combat boots on metal decking.  Commandos declaring the cockpit all clear_.  She shook herself, determined to turn the damn thing off before that chilling laugh rang out, knowing that if she still had SHIELD resources at her disposal she would identify the voice print of that snot-faced shit and gut him herself. 

Her vision was blurry and she hit maximum volume instead.

And there was a noise.

A noise she hadn’t heard on the audio before, too faint and far away from the receiver.

A faint but familiar noise. 

Then the laugh, almost deafening.

She stopped the playback, noting the time, controlling her breathing, trying not to get too excited.  Nothing was certain.  Not life, not death, and not Phil Coulson.

She picked the gun up and finished putting it back together.  This was no time to get distracted.  Vigilance was survival.

Her arsenal restored, she strapped on a gun and took her tablet into the analysis room.  Around here it was just a couple computers in a closet with a reinforced door, but you take what you can get when your whole international spy and security network has been slashed and burned.  With care, she transferred the audio file to the non-networked computer, then opened up the analysis software.  She was hardly a forensic analyst, but you didn’t get to be the former deputy director of SHIELD without being a jack of all trades.

Well, a jack of most trades, and maybe a master of a few.

But forensic data analysis, definitely jack.

She isolated the sound, amplified it, enhanced it.  She compensated for the noise introduced by the satellite relay, the in house telephone lines and Nick Fury’s high quality super spy answering machine and phone-tap voice recording equipment.  _Translation: clicked the buttons._   She ran several simulations based on where she thought the sound was coming from relative to the receiver, _slightly more advanced button clicking with actual customized settings_ , and she even created a known sample sound file to compare it to.

And then she listened.

And listened again.

And listened again.

And after one brief moment to jump up and down in hope and glee, she got hold of herself and her calm, then woke up Nick Fury, and she did not rush in and jump on his bed like an over-excited pup because _nothing was certain_ , and frankly she wasn’t so stupid as to invite Nick to blow her head off before he was even awake.

She did yell from the door.

“What in the _goddamn hell_ woman, I told you not to—”  His hand was on his gun and he was half out of bed before he realized who he was talking to.  His blush was epic.  “Are we under attack?”  His voice was utterly business as he stood, checking the clip and reaching on his nightstand for the eyepatch that was no longer there. 

Maria channeled her best Coulson Poker Face and wondered who Nick had thought he was talking to.  “I need you to listen to something.”  Without further word, she turned and led him to the analysis room, sat him in a chair and handed him a set of giant, old school headphones.  He put them on and plugged them in as she sat next to him, putting in one earbud.  “What does this sound like to you?”

She could see his frown in the monitor, could feel his suspicious glare when he turned it on her, but she kept her eyes on the screen, not wanting to influence him.  Hope was so powerful, but so biased.

It really said something about her life that when she needed an honest assessment she went to Nick Fury.

“A blow torch?”  He shook his head, listening as she played it again.  “Hell, it sounds like one of our mouseholes.”

Maria tried not to react but she must have flinched somehow because Nick immediately leaned forward, grabbing her arm. 

“Where is this from?  Are they breaking through the walls?”

She shook her head, pulling out her earbud.  “It’s from the audio of May’s call from the Bus.”  She gripped the handrails of her chair hard, willing herself not to shake.  “Who else had the mouseholes besides you and me?  I know you wanted them as a last resort, but who else knew about them?  Did Hand have one?”

Nick stared at the screen, thinking hard.  “It was Level 9 and above.  You had one, I had one.  Not Hand, and not Coulson.  Could be HYDRA.”  He looked away, rubbing at his jaw.  “But they seemed so damned surprised when we pulled that trick.  Both times.  You’d think they’d be better prepared if they had it themselves.”

He leaned back in his chair.  “Did the sound come from inside the Bus or outside the Bus?”  Nick’s eyes were closed and his hand was clenching and releasing, but he did not move otherwise.

“I don’t know.”  Maria opened the whole file on the visual display, important timepoints notated.  “The simulations are most consistent if it’s inside the Bus, but not in the cockpit.  It was far away but the blast doors were opened here and the strike team kept the doors open.  The most likely scenario is if they did have a mousehole and it was inside the Bus, someone cut through the floor after they were boarded.”

“And why would a strike team cut into a plane they were already on.”  It was not a question.

She played the rest of the enhanced section, after the mousehole, but before the laugh.  Nick frowned while Maria turned her own mousehole over in her hand, pondering how Coulson could have gotten his hands one.  There was a very faint whoosh, like a puff of air. 

Or a pellet gun.

“Why is there a monkey stamped on a device called a mousehole, anyway?”

“Fitzsimmons!”

“What?”  Maria stared at Nick, wondering how much medication he was still on.

“Fitzsimmons!”  He stood up, tearing off the headphones with a growl.  “Leo Fitz, he was the one who invented the mouseholes.  He’s Phil’s engineer on the Bus.”

He jabbed at the sound file with his finger before realizing the secret base did _not_ have touch screens.  Maria silently followed with the mouse.  “That sound, there, the puff of air.  That’s their new tranquilizing guns.  I _know_ Hand didn’t have that.”  Maria played the whole section again.  The mousehole burned.  Faint scuffing sounds as people moved, _jumping out of the hole?_   The puff of air and a very faint falling body.  The strike team oblivious as the laughter begins.  Slow and strange and distorted, but both of them had ample experience reconstructing battles from just the audio.

“Phil had guns.  I didn’t send him into the field unarmed.  Hell, the Bus had a defense system.  If he wanted to, he could have lit up the whole landing bay without getting off the plane.”

Maria frowned.  “No wonder you had May watching him.”

Nick sat in the chair again, swiveling back and forth, probably in lieu of the pacing he was still too tired to do.  “Instead, he snuck out of the plane and infiltrated the Hub with non-lethal guns.”  He shook his head in astonishment.  “They weren’t captured on the audio, they broke out to take back the Hub.”

“With tranquilizer guns.”  Maria stared at the screen.  “Because they didn’t know if the Hub was SHIELD or HYDRA.”

“And if Hand was SHIELD, she didn’t know what side Phil was on either.”  He bowed his head, not letting his own hopes free.  “And Hand fired on him with live rounds.”

Maria raised an eyebrow.  “Maybe May should have been babysitting Victoria.  Why send a strike team against a plane that could vaporize them?”

Nick rolled his eye.  Maria tried not to stare at the scarred one, but unlike Phil she hadn’t had a decade or more to get used to it.  Then it hit her.

“The _plane_?”  Maria snarled.  “She sent in a _human_ strike team with _live rounds_ to take back a _goddamn_ plane because Phil _might_ have been _HYDRA_?  And he could have shot them all _dead_ without getting off the Bus and _didn’t_ because they might have been _SHIELD_?  That _bitch_!”

“Everyone’s been under a lot of stress.  HYDRA has been playing us against ourselves.”

“ _That bitch!_ ”

“Hand was always an excellent strategist until her ego got involved.  HYDRA’s attack was personal and May warned me that Hand was professionally jealous of Phil.  Thought he was my favorite.”

Maria stood up, slamming her hands onto the console.  _“THAT SELFISH BITCH_!”

Nick peered up at her, slightly alarmed.  “Maria, tell me, how do you _really_ feel?”

She glared down at him.  “Everyone knew he was your favorite.  Except Phil.  That’s why we loved him.”  She sat back down.  “Except Victoria.”  She snorted.  “She didn’t like to get her hands dirty.  She didn’t understand.”

“You think she’s dead?  You think Phil is?”

Maria sighed, leaning back in her chair to stretch.  “Phil, I don’t know.  But Victoria Hand, she’s not going to survive long in this mess.  Not if she stays in the game.  She’s not smart enough to second guess herself.”

Nick turned to the super-secure double re-routed, under multiple aliases and dummy accounts, networked computer and started typing, using old contacts and identities to get the latest chatter.  He had been avoiding it, but now he needed to know. 

Now he wanted to know.

“Good work, Maria.” 

She nodded, looking on as he listened in. 

He handed her a cord to connect her tablet to the secure connection.  “Three eyes are better than one.”  They worked in silence, taking turns getting coffee, food, and doing perimeter checks.  It was long after sunrise when a message came through, from a still-trusted contact taking refuge with the CIA.

Nick blinked suspiciously at the posting, then moved aside to let Maria read, laughing.

_Helping to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Still some chaff in the Wheaties, some whole grains locked up.  Going with corn for a while and try to find a balanced breakfast in all this.  GT up to old tricks, riding a unicycle with no hands, doesn’t like the head clown (dressed like a zombie).  Wanted to see the act but the train left town.  Hope that was your cat out of the bag and not Snake’s because the townies were freaked.  I <3 U._

“I’m usually not this stupid, but _what?_ ”  Maria had been up all night working on the analysis.  Nick at least had the advantage of a good night’s sleep.  “Who the hell sent that?  What does it mean?”

“We still don’t know who is SHIELD and who is HYDRA.”

“Yeah, wheat from the chaff.  Got that.”  Maria wiped the grit from her eyes.  “Who, um, loves you enough to tell you this?”

Nick snorted, pointing at the last sentence.  “Sharon.”

“Thirteen.”  Maria rolled her eyes.  “Where did she learn to write covert intel, _Austin Powers_?”

“She’s still young.  But she’s loyal.”  Nick cleared his throat, looking over the message.  “She’s with Colonel Talbot for now, and he’s occupying the Hub.  Hand isn’t there, Coulson was in charge, but left before the takeover.  She hopes I knew he wasn’t dead, but couldn’t figure out how to tell me. 

Maria rolled her eyes.  “We hope it was Coulson.  We though Amador was dead too.  Maybe HYDRA had some other clowns dressed as zombies.” 

Nick raised an eyebrow.  “No one high enough to shock everyone at the Hub.  Besides me, and I’m here.  So Coulson’s alive, but where did he go?”

“Where could he go?  And did he take the Bus?  Is that what the train is?  If he did, they have to be running low on fuel.”

“And the whole act left.  Lola’s only a two-seater, so they took the Bus or another plane.  A ground transport would have been captured by now.”  Nick sighed.

“Does he know about this safehouse?”  Not that it would be a good idea for them to come here.  If whoever was running HYDRA after Pierce died had any brains, they would be on the lookout for any top SHIELD agent still alive.  Maria didn’t have all that many more places to run.  Offering herself (professionally) to Stark was sounding like a better idea all the time.

“No.  This one was for you and me only.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the old set of dog tags she had seen hanging from his bedpost.  She had wondered who Marcus Johnson was, but thought it best not to ask.  Nick fussed with one of the tags, exposing a small tracker.  “I have other stuff that’s just him and me.  Always have.”  He opened up a password protected log in on the networked computer and began activating long-dormant programs.  “Of course he was my favorite.  Damn loyal bastard saved me from myself too many times to count.”  He took back the tags and put them around his neck.  “I’d like to think I even learned a trick or two.” 

Maria raised an eyebrow as the computer asked if it should execute ‘Program Providence.’

“Eric better get up off his ass and vacuum the base.  He’s about the get some company.”

 


End file.
